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Saturday, 20 October 2012

Are you sitting comfortably?... part 1

...then I'll begin...
Grab yourself a cuppa, because for those of you who I haven't been in touch with a lot recently, I'm going to bring you up to speed.

So, to cut a long story short, here I am on Thetis Island in beautiful British Columbia, Canada.

(not bad... I know!)

We (Ken & I) got married, 10th December 2011 here at Capernwray Harbour. We then jetted off on honeymoon to Hawaii, via Vancouver, and San Francisco and then on to England for Christmas with the fam.

Needless to say, by the time we got to England, and under the wing of Mummy Dalring, it was time to rest and relax after a very hectic few months. At first I thought it was just jetlag and exhaustion kicking in as I felt weak, dizzy, tired, nauseous...

Once we got back to Canada (a day late, thanks to lots of delays as we flew via London, San Francisco and Washinton DC back to Vancouver!) I still wasn't feeling 100%. I seemed to keep getting ill and not really fully recovering. After a trip to Manitoba for a conference and visiting Ken's family in February where I was ill for most of the time, we decided I better go to the Drs and get checked out.

My first Drs visit, I got told I was just tired and stressed and to come back in 3 months time if things weren't getting any better!! Thanks! A few weeks later, things were getting worse and so a return trip to the Drs and 8 tubes of blood later, we found that I had vitamin B12 deficiency.

Cue the needles! ... Our on site nurse, kindly agreed to administer my B12 injections 3 times a week for about a month. Nothing. No improvement in energy levels and the muscle aches and sleep disturbances kept on coming... not to mention the night sweats!

In the mean time we decided to also see a naturopathic Dr to get another opinion. We knew something wasn't right. I'm a 6am rising, half marathon running, can't sit still 23 year old. Conking out on the sofa for 2 hours every afternoon after half a day's work, isn't normal! I can barely muster the energy to walk, never mind run!

The naturopath gave me some suggestions for eating better and ordered some more blood work suspecting a thyroid issue and burned out adrenal glands.

In the meantime, I was referred to an Internist by my family doctor as she was a little baffled as to what was going on.

Fast forward a few months and both Internist and Naturopath diagnose that I have Chronic Fatigue/Fibromyalgia. There's nothing to be done for either of those, just symptom management and waiting it out.

We keep on checking in with both the Naturopath and the Internist and after researching for ourselves and discussing with our Naturopath, we decided to get me tested for Lyme's Disease. My symptoms really matched with that and it's quite commonly miss-diagnosed as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Fibromyalgia. I didn't remember getting a tick bite though (this is how Lyme is most commonly carried), and so we were really just testing to rule out the possibility. And so we waited on the results...